Beyond the Brush
For myself, art is the pursuit of happiness; for not to create would be to deny who I am. My art is the integration of things seen and experienced, the record of my existence, the pursuit of perfection and the constant that will be developed to the end. Only time will tell if the vision within the work has meaning enough to enhance the lives of others in the future. Seeing the subtleties of life is my inspiration, to translate it onto canvas is my desire and to play with paint is my passion. The paintings in this book are a small reflection of who I am and what I have seen.
Randolph Parker, like many artists, can trace the influences of his art back to his early childhood. But, unlike that of many others, Parker ’s artistic path is direct and virtually unbroken. It starts where he grew up and leads with little or no detour to where he stands today as one of this country’s great landscape painters.
Parker grew up in Huntsville, Ontario, a small town of about 10,000 people,250 kilometres from Toronto and in the heart of Muskoka. Huntsville sits on the border of Algonquin Park, famous as being the inspiration to the Group of Seven. It was in Huntsville that Parker began his life as an artist.
In 1960,when he was six years old, his mother entered one of Parker ’s drawings in a competition. He won first place and had to appear on television to accept his prize. This posed a problem as the television station was 187 kilometres away and getting there meant driving through a snowstorm. His parents made the trip as a sign of encouragement, and when Parker entered the studio with all its lights and cameras he turned to them, “All this for a drawing?” he said. Today he credits that event with sparking in him an awareness that art is something of great importance.
In the early grades of elementary school Parker drew like many other young children. His images were flat and tended to float on the paper, but it was during this time and at an early age that Parker ’s first major artistic influence took place. It happened during Huntsville ’s “Cavalcade of Colours ” when marching bands joined floats decked out in autumn colours to parade through town. It was such a large and colourful event that the Ontario College of Art sent its students from Toronto to Huntsville to document the parade. It was then that Parker first saw artists at work. He was amazed by two things: how quickly they could render a scene and how they could make a flat piece of paper appear as though it were a window onto a three dimensional world. This led him to an exploration of how to create space and depth in drawing and painting using a single vanishing point linear perspective; a technique for rendering three-dimensional space that was perfected during the Renaissance.
Parker ’s artistic development in elementary school was not always easy. As a young entrepreneur in grade five, he ’d produce nude drawings and sell them to his school mates for 10 cents a piece. When this came to the attention of the principal, Parker was reprimanded and his business quickly shut down.
His teachers continued to encourage him to draw though. One of those who was particularly encouraging was Baden Johns. Johns was one of those exceptional elementary school teachers with a big heart and an innate ability to see where a student ’s strengths lay He would then focus on those strengths and teach in a manner best suited to that particular child. In Parker ’s case this meant learning Canadian history by doing many drawings, maps and projects.
By the end of high school, Parker was dedicated to becoming an artist. To pursue this dream he realized he needed a place that would allow him uninterrupted time to paint. The hunting camp of trapper Wes Wood with 100 acres of land bordering Algonquin Park provided such a place. Parker spent three months there, painting in isolation. The cost of rent was one painting.
